Terrorist Attack May Galvanize Support
For Administration's Missile-Defense Plan

By

Robert S. Greenberger Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Updated Sept. 13, 2001 12:01 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's missile-defense plans would have done nothing to prevent this week's deadly terrorist attacks. Yet the heightened sense of national vulnerability the strikes have created may galvanize new support for an antimissile shield.

Advocates of such a plan argue that as long as the U.S. remains unprotected from a missile attack, a terrorist group could be tempted to launch such a weapon against an American city. Critics of the missile-shield concept counter that this week's attack, in which...